Sunday, July 10, 2011

Insert Epic Soul Clash Here

Time was passing slowly for Kyle. He hasn't been on a solo mission since his clash against Deary in the Street Fighter world. Sure, he has helped other agents on some of their missions, but that was more he went with a group to rescue a Society member that was in over their head. Well, there was that one mission that Marcus was still dealing with, but that's a different story. For Kyle, day in and day out he pushed himself in his training, sometimes to the point of injury. It was never as serious as the first time, but it did serve to force him to rest for longer than he wanted. It was on one of his rest days that something he didn't expect to happen did and it would take a lot more from him than his training did.

"Greetings Society bastards," a Mary Sue with deep crimson hair and chocolate brown skin appeared on every computer screen throughout the Library Arcanium. "You can call me Kaylee Phillis Grim. I have a challenge for the one that defeated my dear Deary. Come to the Endless Abyss of the Night Sky where you and I will fight to the death. Don't worry about any traps, this will be a one-on-one fight. Got it?"

"Respond within one hour because," her tone had gone from even and cheery to one that promised endless pain. "If I don't get a reply, I'll assume you're too cowardly to fight me and then I'll hunt down every Agent that isn't in the Library at the moment and that leaves the Library from this point onward," her tone returned to normal. "Now that unpleasentness is done away with, have a good day."

Her face disappeared from the screens like they were never there.

Kyle himself was oblivious to this announcement as he didn't have a computer in his room. He was merely sitting there on his bed while listening to tranquil music and reading a book for deep thinkers. Imagine his surprise when his door burst open and in came Tash, an angry look on her face. Setting a bookmark in his book and turning his music off, Kyle waited to see what Tash - with a laptop in her arms, he noticed - was confronting him about.

"You've been challenged to a battle by a Sue. She said for you to respond within one hour. We've tried contacting her to say that you'd be there, but she only replied that you have to confirm it, so here, tell her that you're going," Tash held the laptop out for Kyle to take. Recognizing the seriousness of this, he took it and started it up. Once it was done, Tash somberly told Kyle where to send the message. Almost immediately afterwards, Kaylee's face appeared on the screen.

"I've been waiting. This confirms that you're coming, right?" She spoke in a neutral tone. Kyle merely nodded in response. "That's good. I'll be fair and give you one week to get ready. You can come earlier if you so choose, but no more than one week."

She seemed to relax and then smiled, "I'm very interested in seeing if you can live up to the potential I know you have. It'll be quite the fight, I'm sure. See you soon."

Her face vanished from the screen. Kyle shut down the laptop and then handed it back to Tash. Still seeming somber, Tash left without a word. Having been left alone, Kyle sat in his thoughts.

-

In the Endless Abyss of the Night Sky, a dark place that looked like an infinite sky on a clear night, Kaylee stood in a small hunk of floating rock. With her gaze firmly in front of her, it was as if she was waiting for something to happen in the Abyss. At that moment, a beeping echoed throughout the emptiness. The Sue held up a hand and a window-like screen faded into view.

"Has the challenge been accepted?" came commanding female voice.

"Yes, lieutenant. I have given him a week to get ready. Hopefully, what I have planned will succeed. If it does, then the Society bastards are done for."

Kaylee smiled mysteriously, "Because I was remade to hold his power. He won't be able to surprise me."

". . .Let's hope so. I spent a lot of energy to accomodate you for that power. This will set us back a great deal if it fails."

Kaylee shook her head, "It'll only set us back if I'm killed, but you know that won't happen. After my remaking, I was able to defeat the top ten fighters we have without breaking a sweat."

The person on the screen seemed to shift in worry, "Don't get overconfident. Remember, you were only able to handle the remake because I stripped you of every other power you had at the time. If he has more power than predicted, then this will be an unprecedented disaster."

"I understand. Sue Agent Kaylee out."

-

Kyle was debating with himself on whether or not he'd leave his hyperspace arsenal behind with the Society. The main thing for it was that, if they were calling him out, then any of his weapons would be useless. So far, he hasn't thought of anything against leaving them behind. Deciding that it'd be better if they were here for the Society to use instead of collecting dust in his hammerspace, he headed off to every arsenal room he knew of. He passed many members of the society, almost all of them wishing him luck in his upcoming battle. He remained silent and merely nodded in acknowledgment.

Having emptied his hammerspace of almost all weaponry, he immediately thought of all the rations he kept in there. His mind leapt to both the best case and worst case scenarios. Best case scenario; he is victorious and comes home without any problems. In which case, it wouldn't matter if he left them behind because he could just pick them up when he got back...if most of it wasn't eaten before then. Worst case scenario; he's obliterated and that would destroy the rations with him. With that in mind, he decided to leave them behind as well.

Returning to his room after this monumental walking trip considering the size of the library, Kyle fell onto his bed in exhaustion. In this state, he slept for a few hours. He woke up with a start, remembering what he did before napping. Slowly getting off his bed, he changed out of his leisure clothes and into his mission garb. Then he remembered, that he had one weapon still left in his hammerspace because no one else could use it.

Accessing his hammerspace, he reached in and pulled out his Omni-weapon. He stared at it for a few moments and then, set it on a stand on his desk. As if he was preparing for one last thing, he took off his glasses and set them next to his Omni-weapon.

Straightening, he spoke aloud as if to his room itself, "Let these be my promises that I'll come back....I will come back... I promise."

With his face a mask of determination, he made his way to the portal room.

-

Kyle emerged from the portal to find himself on a small piece of floating land. Several meters away stood Kaylee, seemingly surprised to see Kyle arrive in less than 24 hours after agreeing to the challenge when he was given a week to prepare.

"I'm here... let's get this over with." Kyle spoke in a tone that held no humor whatsoever. His face was stoic in his seriousness.

"Why hurry? I gave you a week, so there's no need to rush... Oh yeah, that's right... You're outside of your room, so of course you want to hurry." Kaylee said in an almost conversational voice.

Kyle blinked and then replied, "What did you just say?"

Kaylee seemed to smile, like she had just got an edge against her opponent, "Oh, nothing really. I just commented on how you hardly ever leave your room. Well, to be fair, you at least wander around your house from time to time."

Kyle gawked, "Hey, you're breaking the Fourth Wall."

"I know, but I'm a Mary Sue, so it's not like I care. Speaking of Sues, I think I'd classify you like that." Kaylee countered.

"Yet you have such power. And then there's also the fact that most of the characters you think up have incredible power themselves. Those Homunculi characters aren't even your strongest."

"How the heck do you know about my characters?"

Kaylee just smiled at the question and then continued like he hadn't said anything, "You try to tone them down or give them some thing that makes them human, but we both know that you don't really know the first thing about being human."

Kyle staggered back a step as if he had been struck. He was staring at her with eyes wide in shock.

-

Inside the Library, most of the agents that are off-duty had gathered to watch the fight between Kyle and the Sue. However, many of them were wondering what Kaylee was implying with that statement she just made.
"That heartless wretch! She's attacking him psychologically," Tash shouted in anger.

Adrian watched the screen with narrowed eyes before responding, "No, she's doing more than that. I'd bet the Library itself that she's pulling a Hannibal Lecter on him. She's setting up to manipulate him somehow other than knocking him off his game for the fight. The only two things I can't figure out are; What she wants from him and how she knows these things about him."

Tash seemed to think and seeth at the same time. After a few moments she came out with, "She was breaking the Fourth Wall. That requires prior knowledge about what she was talking about. Kyle was never exactly the most open and social of the agents, so most people here don't really know anything about him. Something isn't adding up here."

-

"I know a lot about you. For all of your philosophic thinking and your comprehensive mind, you actually know very little about people in general. Oh, you know a great deal about general morality and could debate rather well on many philosophies. However, you never really had any friends in school, because you were different from everyone else. Those few you did interact with could never have been friends with you. Most of them probably had great laughs at your expense or insulted you behind your back. It's quite understandable when you realize that you were in Special Ed since fourth grad."

Kyle clenched his hands and bowed his head. He did nothing else.

"As for the literal few that you could actually call friends, well, they weren't really friends enough in the end, were they? Many of them found something they didn't like about you and basically told you to F off. Other merely drifted away from you until they stopped interacting with you entirely. The teachers weren't any better, were they? For all intents and purposes, you looked like a normal person to them. They could never seem to figure out why someone with a keen intellect like you got such horrible grades when they have seen what you can do when you actually put the effort into working."

He may as well have been a statue for how much he reacted. Kaylee took that as a sign to keep going.
"You were never officially diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. So, to let you into Special Ed, they labelled you Emotionally Disturbed. Yet, according to your own mother, you fit almost every requirement needed to be diagnosed when you were in elementary school. Up until your second year in middle school, you were on medication, until you found out that your resting heart rate was 130, for reasons you never knew, much less understood and questioned. Your own father never understood you and many times, it seemed like he had given up trying to. Sister was too old to spend the needed time with you, while Oldest brother was too egotistical to pay you any attention other than the occasional sibling torment. Middle brother felt neglected because he wasn't the baby of the family anymore, though he was the one you interacted with the most. Mother tried to do what mothers do, but by the time it occurred to her that you had such a mental disorder, it was more or less too late."

"Then there was debacle when you were nine. How a teacher had thought you were having sex with another boy is beyond even someone like me, but so many problems occurred after it that basically set you up to grow up like you did. Your parents were told it'd be struck from the records when you turned eighteen, but that didn't stop your parents from becoming paranoid about what you did while you were on the computer for years afterward. No one has understood you for so long and for all you know, that won't change... ever."

-

The Society listened to this listing of events in a fellow member's life. A few of them were disgusted at the lack of caring. Others wondered why he hadn't snapped yet. Most of the definitely felt sorry for him.

"Now it's really not adding up. Not only is she breaking the Fourth Wall, but she's doing it with Real Life events. This exceeds every threat level I can think of, if a Sue has access to such knowledge!" Tash exclaimed.

Adrain's posture suggested deep, almost painful thinking. After a few moments of this, he snapped to attention and declared, "I know what she's planning!"

That got everybody's attention firmly on him. Adrian took a few deep breaths and continued, "You guys remember when she said that she'd classify Kyle like a Sue. I've no doubt that's exactly what she's after. Folks, it'll be disastrous for the Society if she succeeds."

Aster spoke up, "Well, we'd be losing a member while they'd be gaining a member. Of course that's bad, kyaa~!"

Tash seemed to know exactly what Adrian was implying as she replied, "It's more than that. One thing you have to remember about most members of the Society; they're not just Agents, they're authors!"

-

Kyle still stood with his bowed head and clenched fist. After a few moments, his voice in low volume carried itself through the silence of the void, "How do you know all this about me?"

Kaylee responded amiably, "Because I have exceeded my bounds as a Sue. All thanks to you and your battle with Deary."

Raising his head a small fraction, Kyle asked still in his low voice, "What does that have to do with you?"

The Sue was positively beaming as she answered, "Deary and I were very rare among Sues, in that we wanted to become more. For all our perfection, us Sues are only equal to self-inserts in terms of power. However, most Sues don't understand that and still believe that their perfection makes them more powerful than the Agents of the Society. As for Deary, in her desire to become more than a mere Sue, she did what many others of our kind did and got herself destroyed because of it. I could tell that she'd have destroyed herself with all that power eventually, so you defeating her merely brought the end result faster."

"So, what does your battle with Deary have to do with me? Though I didn't understand it at the time, the power that you displayed set me on the path to succeed where others of my kind have failed. To become more than a Sue, I asked our great leader to grant me your power."

Kaylee spread out her arms like she was about to hug her opponent, a pure white aura outlining her body, "That's right. I have acquired the power of the Heaven and Earth, Worldly Secret Art! Of course, the leader had to strip me of every other power I had to prevent me from being torn apart by it, but it was well worth it. This technique, it's more than just power... the user also gains incredible knowledge as well! That's how I know what I do about you, Kyle. With the Heaven and Earth, Worldly Secret Art, I could read the life of every member of the Society and know them better than they know themselves."

"Heaven and Earth, Worldly Secret Art!" Her aura began to pulse evenly, as if synchronized with her heartbeat. After a few moments of this, the aura vanished and a gargantuan image appeared behind her. "Soul of Perfection!"

Because he hadn't activated the Heaven and Earth, Worldly Secret Art, Kyle's mind could only comprehend an outline of her image, and everyone in the Library watching this were only barely able to make that out. Well, almost everyone... Adrian's eyes could see a burry image of a human similar to Kaylee herself, but not much other than that.

"How does it feel to be facing someone who wields almost godly power? Someone who has ascended to a level that entire worlds of people cannot comprehend? You don't have to tell me, I can sense it." The words that everyone heard was a language that no mortal could ever hope to grasp, but it was as if the words themselves wanted to be understood, so conveyed their meaning instead. "Hehe... so much knowledge... how about I tell you what the Society is currently thinking of you?"

"Millennium Breaker!" For a few moments, the monitor at the Society whited out in the intense flash of light that signalled Kyle's attack. When the light faded though, he might as well have not attacked for all the damage it did to anything. Curiously enough, Kaylee had a grin on her face.

"I was wondering when you were going to attack. Really, it took you that long? Apathetic with a short fuse, that's the most accurate way I can describe your personality."

For his part, Kyle merely stared at her with a stoic look on his face. Kaylee giggled and then continued, "Well, you're just proving me right by doing that, you know. I wonder though, are you really of any importance to the Society? Because, as far as I've seen, hardly anyone in the Society would care if you were to suddenly drop off the face of the Earth like that Blake fellow did."

Kyle's eyes narrowed and he crossed his arms, but showed no other expression of how he felt. The Sue giggled some more at this response before speaking again, "Truth hurts, doesn't it? It's truely sad that people dedicated to saving worlds from Sues and Stus don't even give a second thought to strangers, even when those strangers are their comrades."

"Do you Sues give your comrades a second thought?" Kyle spoke in a stoically flat tone. "Because, if you don't, then you can't really say anything about the minds of the Society, hypocrite."

Kaylee laughed at that, "Ohohohohohoho! Isn't that the Pot calling the Kettle black? It doesn't matter now, but before I had acquired this power, I had acted just like others Sues when it came to my comrades. That is, generally ignored them because I acted haughtily towards anyone I percieved as less perfect than myself, which was anyone not at my level of Sue. Seriously, it's no wonder that the Society regularly whips them. With attitudes like that, their egos defeat them long before their opponents do."

"That doesn't surprise me in the least. Now, are we done beating around the bush or is the monkey still chasing the weasel?"

"Witty, you can use that intelligence when you feel like it. That's why I like you so much, but it looks like my previous methods aren't working on you. I guess you're more apathetic than I thought. If that's the case, then I'll resort to plan B."

"Plan B?" Kyle asked with a frown on his face. The Sue grinned and then, her image sprang forward and grabbed him. Kyle was so surprised that thinking about struggling didn't even occur. Well, that or he knew that struggling wouldn't get him anywhere. What surprised him, and everyone who was watching at the Society, even more is the image did next. Almost like it was cradling him, it pushed him against where its belly would be... and absorbed him.

-

Many Society members watching this started panicking while several others seemed to be in shock. Tash was already shouting orders to create a rescue party. The only person who had any semblance of calm was Adrian because his eyes could see something that everyone elses couldn't.

"SETTLE DOWN!" Adrian bellowed. Almost all activity ceased and silence reigned. Taking a deep breath, he spoke again, "Before we go and do something needless, perhaps we should remember who it was that brought that technique to light."

Everyone mulled that over as they once again faced the screen.

-

For her part, Kaylee was ecstatic. Having captured the man who she held a power of, meant to her that the Society would soon fall and everything would be perfect. That's when she felt it. A torrent of power surged through her image and a beam of light shot out of its belly. The beam landed on the piece of land that Kyle had occupied previously. When it faded away, Kyle was glaring at the Sue with his aura glowing brightly.

"Heaven and Earth, Worldly Secret Art!" He spoke in a commanding voice. His aura's pulsing seemed to generate pressure as the floating land cracked underneath him. Just when it seemed that the island couldn't take it anymore, he finished, "Soul of Dragon!"

His aura vanished and his massive dragon image emerged. He could now see Kaylee's image clearly, a huge version of herself dressed like a Japanese goddess. The Sue's eyes could see Kyle's image looked like someone had taken parts from dragons of various mythos and streamlined them together to create something majestic.

"Infinite Symphony!" Unlike Deary before her, Kaylee could easily percieve the oncoming attack; a seemingly endless barrage of homing lasers. In an effort to defend herself, she used an attack of her own.

"Cosmic Game!" Kyle's eyes could see it, star-like balls of energy numbering as many as his lasers. Each one that connected exploded, eventually cancelling both attacks after a few moments. Undaunted, Kyle attacked again.

"Endless Phantasia! Countless blades of energy formed around Kyle, who then sent them spinning lethally towards Kaylee. In response, the Sue released another attack.

"Universal Music!" Waves of energy crashed into the blades, once again cancelling both. Again undaunted, Kyle started another strike.

"Limitless Wonder!" Meteor-like missiles shot towards the Sue in a massive curtain. It was starting to irk Kaylee as she grit her teeth before counterattacking.

"Eternal Waltz!" Thousands of energy spikes intercepted the oncoming missile curtain, destroying every last one of them. Kaylee glared at Kyle after the explosion dissipated, when she saw it. She could see Kyle's candle of life. It looked about half way gone.

"Our powers appear to be equal, yet you have attacked me like this. I have to wonder why..."

Kyle held his stoic look on her and then replied, "I assume you can see my candle of life. Well, the same holds true for me. That is, I can see yours. From what I see, it's almost burned out."

Kaylee's eyes popped open in shock. Immediately after he brought it up, she could feel it. If she kept the Heaven and Earth, Worldly Secret Art going any longer, she wouldn't live past the next few minutes. She was aware however, of what would happen if she ended the technique; Kyle would wipe her out anyway. Accepting that her life would end shortly either way, she decided to take Kyle with her.

"Perpetual Drawing!" Streams of energy flew towards Kyle as if being guided by an invisible pen. Kyle merely shook his head before blocking with an attack of his own.

"Absolute Corridor!" Kaylee's streams were engulfed by an incredible ray of light and she just barely avoided it.

Feeling her candle start to flicker out, Kaylee chose on one last desperate maneuver, "If I cannot take you with me on the last of my life, then I will simply keep you from returning to that damn Society. TOTAL DESCENT!"

In an burst of light, all the stars in the Endless Abyss of the Night Sky vanished and the pieces of land that held them shattered. Kaylee's body was reduced to vapor from the exertion while Kyle was left to fall into the now infinite darkness. For a few moments, Kyle tried to do something... anything, but he was powerless. Even his image couldn't move. It was with a heavy heart, that he came to a realization. Ending the Heaven and Earth, Worldly Secret Art, Kyle spoke to the emptiness in a voice full of sorrow.

"I'm sorry, everyone... I didn't even get to say goodbye..."

As the words soaked into the darkness, an unseen stream of tears trailed after him.

-

When Kyle had activated his Heaven and Earth, Worldly Secret Art, the screen at the Society lost the signal for the Endless Abyss. They still had tracking on Kyle's and Kaylee's signal, but no actual visual. Everyone started to worry about what was happening. When Kaylee's signal faded, everyone seemed to breath a sigh of relief. Then, it happened...everyone present at that point in time felt like they just lost something.

One of the people operating the moniters then exclaimed, "I don't understand what just happened. Kyle's signal... it's gone!"